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Central alumna to serve on state Supreme Court

Central alumna to serve on state Supreme Court

Kirby

By KATE COILCorrespondent

A Columbia Central graduate is stepping up to the bench to serve on the Tennessee Supreme Court.

Gov. Bill Haslam appointed Holly M. Kirby to the court to succeed Janice M. Holder, who is retiring from the bench upon the expiration of her term. Kirby will take her seat on the state supreme court on Sept. 1, 2014.

Kirby grew up in Memphis, but her family moved to Columbia during her sophomore year of high school.

“We moved to Columbia for family reasons and settled there,” she said. “It was a great place to be a teenager and finish up high school.”

She said she enjoyed the change from an urban center to Columbia’s small-town environment.

“There are a lot of things look back on fondly,” she said. “It was a terrific change from growing up in Memphis, which is a very urban environment. At that time Columbia was smaller than it is now and was still an environment where people knew everyone else.”

The close-knit atmosphere of the community is one of the things Kirby said she admired about Columbia.

“All of your friends parents’ knew what you were doing, which was a big change for me,” she said. “If everyone got in a car and drove to Nashville, it got back to your parents.”

Kirby said she began to consider law as a future career while attending Columbia Central.

“While I was at Central was when I started focusing on going to law school,” she said. “I knew I wanted to go to law school before I knew what I wanted to major in at college.”

Dedicated teachers from the school also have a special place in Kirby’s memory.

“I am very grateful to the English teachers and the history teachers I had and also our math teacher,” she said. “They all involved different disciplines of the mind.”

Kirby said she still employs those lessons in her work as a judge.

“You may not retain the specific information you get, but the mental discipline really translated for me and helped me succeed many years down the road,” she said. “I still apply all the logic and mental discipline I learned at Columbia Central from those dedicated teachers.”

During her time at Columbia Central, Kirby was also involved in various clubs and participated in the school play.

“At Columbia Central, I was very involved in academics, the math club, the National Honors Society and the Beta Club,” she said. “I was a member of the tennis team. We instituted while I was there and I helped organize an annual play.”

Working as a judge, Kirby said she is able to use what she has learned to help people in some of the most difficult situations they face.

“I really love the fact that many of these cases involve some of the most difficult things in people’s lives, whether it be the custody of their children, suffering a terrible injury or having a business dispute,” she said. “There are many, many different issues that can define someone’s life, and I get to be a part of resolving those issues for them in as fair a way within the boundaries of the law as I can.”

For future law students, Kirby said her best advice is to study hard and learn as much as they can.

“Law is very interdisciplinary,” she said. “They need to challenge themselves in hard courses across the board as law is intellectual Olympics. You have to be smart in different ways, to be able to write and to speak and to know people.”

Kirby said she is looking forward to serving her fellow Tennesseans on the state’s supreme court.

“It is an awesome responsibility to serve on the Tennessee Supreme Court,” she said. “The court going forward is going to have great challenges, especially as state courts across the nation are faced with lawsuits that deal with very important social and economic issues. I hope to maintain a philosophy of judicial restraint and resolve those issues with my colleagues.”

Kirby’s legal experience has earned her praise from the governor and fellow lawmakers across the state. Maury County Circuit Court Judge Robert L. “Bobby” Holloway has worked with Kirby in the past. He said Kirby has a wealth of experience with legal issues.

“She has a lot of expertise, especially with child and parental rights and interstate custody issues,” Holloway said. “She is a great writer. I have worked with her a lot on past bills with the Tennessee Judicial Conference.”

Holloway said Kirby is also greatly respected in the courtroom.

“She was a very well respected lawyer and is a very well respected judge,” he said. “She is also a very nice person.”

Kirby was born in Memphis but her family moved to Columbia in 1972 when she was a sophomore. After graduating from Columbia Central, Kirby graduated first in her class from the Memphis State University — now University of Memphis — College of Engineering in 1979.

She graduated third in her class from the University of Memphis School of Law in 1982. She was a Herff Scholar, Honors Alumni Scholar, Law Review Notes Editor and served as Speaker of the student senate during her tenure in college.

After completing a judicial clerkship under U.S. Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit Court Judge Henry W. Wellford in 1983, Kirby joined the Memphis-based law firm Burch, Porter and Johnson where she specialized in employment litigation and family law. She became the firm’s first female partner in 1990 and served until she was appointed Assistant Shelby County Attorney in 1994 by Mayor Jim Rout. In 1995, then-Gov. Don Sundquist appointed Kirby as the first woman to serve on the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

Kirby has served on the Tennessee Board of Judicial Conduct since 2012, on the Tennessee Court of the Judiciary from 1998-2012 and on the Tennessee Judicial Conference since 1995. She also served on the Council of State Governments interbranch committee in 2013, the Tennessee Appellate Court Nomination Commission from 1989-1994 and was a court appointed special advocate from 1992-1994.

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